Ryan is one round away from a potential clash with top seed Alexander Lebedev

R1 (L64)

(15) Ryan James Storrie (GBR) d. Eric Rutledge (USA) 6-4 6-1

R2

Sebastian Mermersky (USA) v (15) Ryan James Storrie (GBR)

The new guy on the block puts out the top seed with ease :


R3: (15) Ryan James Storrie (GBR) def. (1) Alexander Lebedev (USA) 6-1 6-4

QF: (15) Ryan James Storrie (GBR) v (5) Sam Riffice (USA)

That's a little 'unfair' in a way.

A couple of months ago, no one had ever heard of him (hence dedicated thread), never came up in any discussions.

And he'd never played a single ITF match. (As he doesn't have a green card, and lives in the States, there are regulations problems).

He then blast onto the scene with one spectacular junior debut match/tournament (as David points out). And then gave two adult ITF tournaments a go (lost in qualies once, made main draw once and lost in first round).

Obviously, a grade 5 looks 'easy' in comparison and we indeed hope that he's under-ranked, and that he wins the tournament. And it's great to have a new junior boy's name to throw in the mix. But he's very inexperienced and is still an unknown quantity (nearly lost to the unranked Memersky in R2, see above) so I think it's good to applaud his achievements, at whatever level, rather than 'expecting' him to win.

Well, he chased off Chase with no problem:

SF

(15) Ryan James Storrie (GBR) def. Chase Colton (USA) 6-1 6-4


and now plays a qualifier who's come through without losing a set


Final: (15) Ryan James Storrie (GBR) v (q) Joshua Sheehy (USA)

Congratulations to Ryan on a solid tournament win! I'm not particularly clued up on junior tennis but I presume that Ryan is pretty badly underranked because of his technical issues?

BeefyDeedz wrote:

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Congratulations to Ryan on a solid tournament win! I'm not particularly clued up on junior tennis but I presume that Ryan is pretty badly underranked because of his technical issues?

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That's what we're hoping

But no one had heard of him a couple of months back, he has seemingly no track record at all (that shows up anywhere), so nobody really knows and we're just guessing based on a couple of results and one complimentary newspaper article. But here's to fingers crossed  . . .

Yes, but up until now he'd only won 4 singles matches in juniors, and only one with a player ranked under 1000;

and 5 adult matches (4 of which against unranked opponents, one only age 15, one some unknown 36 year-old)

- i.e. that's only one highly ranked junior and one decent senior.


The point, however, that I find really interesting is the programme/approach they've chosen.

Storrie's coach sounds like a very good, experienced guy. And he knows Storrie well. There's clips of Ryan playing a set and getting advice from Mats Willander a couple of year's back So he's not a kid form the backwoods). And the coach obviously has certain clout and influence because he got Ryan an entry into the Grade 1 Prince George qualies, when the boy had zero ranking points or (seemingly) no certified results.

And yet, up to a month ago or so, they'd chosen to play zero ITF junior events (which, as The Optimist says, he could have done). And is not eligible for US domestic tennis. So what has he been doing?

And now, over a few weeks, they've put him in for a prestigious Grade 1 junior event, an adult 10k event, and a Grade 5.

It's the sublime to the ridiculous. I half expect him to pop up in a Challenger quali, or at the Funday Sunday knock-around competition at the local park.

On the fact of it, it shows a healthy disregard for the standard way of doing things and a rather 'Spanish' disdain for the ITF junior grading system. Will be interesting to see where they go from here . ..